Every Wall is a Door

by Anne Bennett on March 24, 2010

My daughter Elizabeth designed this bookmark.

It’s common knowledge that Beethoven became deaf during his lifetime. What isn’t as well known is that despite his eventual complete loss of hearing, he continued to compose music. His greatest symphony, Symphony #9, The Choral, was the first symphony ever written that included human singing (the inspiring “Ode to Joy”), and it was completed after he was stone deaf.

He was on stage in Vienna the night it was first performed in 1824, and at the end, witnesses said that one of the singers had to turn him around to face a cheering audience that he could not hear.

Beethoven is an amazing example of a person overcoming huge obstacles. Neither he, nor countless others who aren’t famous but who nonetheless endured as much, allowed an unfortunate twist-of-fate to defeat him.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Every wall is a door”. From my perspective this means that for every obstacle we encounter in life, there is always a way over, around or through it. There is nothing that cannot be endured.

Smashing into walls can hurt. I’ve collided with a few in my time and it wasn’t pretty. However, as much as I hate to admit it, when I look back on what I’ve learned from my life so far, I realize that walls are a necessary learning tool.

Over the course of almost 40 years as an adult, I learned to control my weight, but only after repeatedly going on crazy diets in which I re-gained every pound I lost. When I hit the biggest wall of all, the death of a loved one (my mom), I grieved for a long time but then learned to honor her life by getting on with mine.

It isn’t exactly comforting to know that we will always have to endure hardships, that we will be tested, again and again, for our willingness to circumvent life’s inevitable obstacles. But we are empowered when we realize that whenever we hit a wall, we hold the key to its door.